comforts, but the superior treasures of another and a better world.

"All holy scriptures were given for our learning ;" and shall the one we are now discussing teach us nothing? Shall the interesting history of this pious Patriarch leave upon our minds no other impression, than the recollection of an hour's entertainment and an hour's feeling, while we rejoiced in the prosperity and sighed over the vicissitudes of the good man's fortunes? No, My Brethren, this is not the object of these eternal records; we may peruse them with pleasure, but we must peruse them for instruction too. They are the organ of God's will; they are pregnant with the most important information to his creatures, and contain that blessed hope of everlasting life, which if we fail to elicit from them, we shall read, and live, and die in vain. To excite that hope where it is yet wanting, and to strengthen its practical influence where it exists, should be the main object of every commentary upon Scripture. It is as men embued with this vivacious hope that I now address you; it is as men baptized into Christ's Church, as men believing in Christ's revelation, and as men who would fain act in conformity to Christ's will, that I can hope to moderate your affections for the world's pleasures, by unveiling the superior joys of immortality. For those joys, amidst all the inhabitants of this

living world, man is the honoured, the privileged, the exclusive candidate. The beasts of earth toil for his use, live for his pleasure, and die for. his sustenance. The fowls of air may seek their eirie on the rock, and if secure from his dominion, they rear their young, and at last die in their nest, they may be supposed to have fulfilled the happiest destiny of which their nature is susceptible. But it is not so with man. The confines of human life embrace but the tiniest part of his existence, and if that tiny part be not spent in preparation for his immortal destiny, he will be hopeless in time, and miserable in eternity.

Have you, my hearers, reflected on these things as deeply as you ought? Have you made them the basis of your projected happiness? Or rather have you taken them into the computation at all? Bear with me, I speak to you not in cruel mockery, but with an ardent desire to cure the wound I probe. Have you not been too much accustomed to measure your felicity by your health, your riches, your honours, or by your several prospects of acquiring these attributes? You are healthy and have therefore seemingly much leisure in store for you. So were thousands yesterday, who to day are in their grave. You have sheep and oxen, and gold and merchandise, and therefore expect to die in the gilded nest which your fortune or your in

dustry has created. So had Job; but why recur to ancient history? So had thousands of your fellow-labourers but a few years since, who now swell the list of bankruptcy and ruin! But granting you, to the fullest possible extent, the destiny which you so much covet; granting you four-score years, the full lease of mortality, and that since you must die some how and some where, you meet death in the form and in the place in which you would most wish to encounter him; will you then consider your happiness as decisive? Are you bold enough, or mad enough, to affirm, that all you would hope or pray for, will be then accomplished? God forbid, My Brethren, that you or I should so delude ourselves. We travel along the dusty road of this mortal pilgrimage, in various equipages, and with various degrees of comfort and celerity; but towards the conclusion of our journey we all grow tired alike, and look for peace in that lowly tabernacle "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." But rest and the grave are not inseparable companions. To dissolve their fellowship, if it be not lawful, "the trumpet will sound and the dead shall be raised." Then will be instituted that just and solemn inquisition, which shall apportion the rewards and punishments of eternity. In the distribution of these the Almighty Judge will not consider where a man died, but how he died.

U

Wealth and poverty, health and sickness, rank and slavery, all factitious grades of society will be at an end, before that dread tribunal, where virtue and vice will remain the only recognized distinctions. Woe then to the hypocrite; woe to the infidel; woe to the scorner. The silence

of the grave were melody, the dank cold tomb were paradise, the slimy devourers of the dead were comforters, compared to the sounds and sights and sense of woe which constitute the agonies of a condemned and outcast spirit. But turn you, My Brethren, from these thoughts of horror, and behold the joy that awaits the righteous. To repose in the kingdom of your heavenly Father, with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob; to meet the wise, the good, the pious of every age, and every country, in the presence of your common Parent; to dwell with them in felicity, pure, endless, and inconceivable; this will be the ultimate fate of those fortunate beings who have embraced the Gospel of their Lord in sincerity, and laid the basis of their happiness in faith and virtue. That we may so act and be so rewarded, be it the merciful ordination of that Holy and Eternal Spirit, to whom with God the Father, and God the Son, be now ascribed all majesty and dominion for ever.

SERMON XXVIII.

ON THE PROVIDENCE AND POWER OF GOD AS

DISPLAYED IN THE DEEP *.

PSALM CVII. 23, 24, 25.

They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters, these men see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. For at his word the stormy wind ariseth, which lifteth up the waves thereof.

THE Psalmody was one of the most valuable bequests that David left to his posterity. The Books of Kings and Chronicles have exhibited him as a warrior, a legislator, and a sovereign, but it remained to the Book of Psalms to immortalize him with the nobler fame of the poet, the philosopher, and the prophet.

It must be confessed there were many strange inconsistencies in the conduct of this wonderful prince. In the course of his long and eventful history we see him, notwithstanding his wisdom

* Preached in Newfoundland, on the arrival of the springships from England.